


I am waiting for you to come home, brother mine

by LorienofLoth



Series: If I could only bring them home [3]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 17:08:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9617192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LorienofLoth/pseuds/LorienofLoth
Summary: Tara Wilson is thirteen when she learns to hate. Tara Wilson is thirteen when she loses faith.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This has been floating around for ages, so I thought I might as well get it posted.

When she is thirteen Tara Wilson learns to hate.

When she is thirteen, Tara Wilson’s brother’s name is called at the Reaping, in the square, in front of all of Panem. Tara is stood with Olive, her best friend, with the rest of the thirteen year olds, near the front, both of them in their Reaping best. Tara’s dress is yellow. It seems inappropriate somehow, the cheerful dress in their silent, hopeless district, and Tara hunches into herself in the bright sunlight and hopes it doesn’t draw attention to her, as if the lottery might follow the cameras.

The dress doesn’t draw attention to Tara. The escort—a giggling, vapid man with eyelashes longer than Tara’s fingers—calls Floret Tarr’s name out, and Tara slumps in guilty relief. 

Then it is the boys, and Tara isn’t worried. She has three brothers who are of Reaping age, but Eleven is huge. She might feel like she’s going to be sick, but there is nothing to actually be scared of. So she is perfectly calm when the escort puts his fingers, with their eerily long black nails, into the pot and draws out a name. After all, it won’t be one of her brothers’ names on there.

Then the escort shouts ‘Cane Wilson,’ and Tara freezes. 

Cane shoulders his way up to the stage gracelessly, but it doesn’t matter because everyone is stumbling to get out of his way. He is cursed, as if the Reaping is contagious. Tara doesn’t move. Their brothers are running towards him and she can hear her mother shouting, but Tara just stands there, in her bright yellow dress. The cameras find her quickly though—is that how Cane was chosen? Did she draw them to him too—and then people start to step away from her.

Olive is trying to lead her to the Justice Building, but Tara stops to look around at her district, who are stood there, like this is fine, like Cane being Reaped is something to just accept. Tara puts her hand in Olive’s and lets herself be led to the Justice Building, where white-clad peacekeepers are stood outside waiting. Her parents and brothers and little sister aren’t there and Olive isn’t allowed inside and Tara tries not to shiver under their cold gaze. She hasn’t been whipped since last winter, but she still struggles to move towards them. Cane wouldn’t. Cane isn’t scared of anything; he’s always in trouble with the Peacekeepers. He says being scared is just giving up, and he wouldn’t give up. She keeps going.

The room that has been allotted for tributes to say goodbye to their families isn’t very big, so Floret’s family are nearby, and Tara tries not to feel guilty about her previous relief. She isn’t very successful, but Floret’s family aren’t looking at her anyway; they’re too busy crying and saying goodbye to their daughter. 

Tara’s family aren’t crying. Mama always said crying gets you nowhere in life, and Cane says if someone makes you want to cry, punch them, but they’re hugging each other tightly enough to leave marks. Tara’s daddy is holding her little sister, even though she is too big to be held really, and her brothers are just standing and staring at Cane. Tara does the same. He’s tall, taller than her daddy or any of her friends’ brothers, and strong. He can keep working for hours in the harvest, carrying heavier loads than anyone else. He’s always in trouble with the peacekeepers and they don’t scare him, even when they told him they’d take his hand if he was caught taking fruit again. She can’t think of anyone tougher than him, and when Mama releases him she tells him so, running forward to hug him hard. He picks her up like she’s still a little girl, even though she does adult work in the harvest now, and she thinks none of the other tributes would be able to do this, would they? 

The peacekeepers come eventually and usher her brother and Floret off to the train. Tara stands with her family and stares at a spot on the wall. Cane might say it’s better to punch the things that make you cry, but she can’t just punch the Reaping.

Tea that evening is silent. No-one says anything, not even when Holly doesn’t eat more than two spoonfuls, even though usually Mama would have something to say about wasting food. Tara eats all of her food, even though it tastes like nothing in her mouth. As she lies in bed that night she wonders what Cane is eating in the Capitol, and if he will have any food in the Games up ahead. He doesn’t know how to hunt or forage or anything, and the tributes from Eleven rarely get food sent to them.

The next evening, they all congregate around the television to watch the tribute interviews. They’re in order so Mama says it doesn’t matter if they miss the early ones, but Tara wants to see all of them. Cane is going to have to fight some of these tributes, so she needs to know all she can about them.

The Careers are first, like they always are, all shiny and glamorous. The last two Victors have been from One, and the one before that was from Two, and their tributes don’t look like anyone Tara has ever met. The girl from One is in a shiny gold dress, like a better version of Tara’s Reaping one, but it is backless and has only the thinnest of straps. She wonders if it too will be unlucky, but the girl doesn’t seem worried. She giggles and blows kisses. She’s almost delicate looking and Tara decides Cane could beat her in a fight easily enough.

None of the tributes, it turns out, look as strong as Cane, and the interviewer comments on it too. Cane just grunts. 

Tara tries to explain to her family that it’s alright, that Cane is going to be fine, because look at the competition. The pair from Two are a little bit scary, but they’re the only ones. The pair from Ten are only thirteen, and the boy from Twelve cried. 

Her parents look at each other, then her father nods and agrees Cane has a good chance. Her brother scoffs and Mama sends him out of the room. He leaves, but they all hear him slam the front door on the way out. 

In Eleven they don’t bother too much with the run-up to the Games, the interviews with mentors and commentary and analysis. Tara works long days in the blazing heat, but she doesn’t work alone. People who had backed away at the Reaping now come and give her a hand, or stop for a quick chat with her. She thinks maybe they’ve realised they don’t need to be scared of contagion because she’s not unlucky; Cane can make it. 

The first day of the Games, their little house is full. Aunts and uncles and cousins and family friends are all crammed in their tiny living room, with her parents and her great-grandmother, who is the oldest person Tara has ever met, on chairs dragged in from the kitchen and everyone else scattered on the floor and on the mattress she shares with Holly. Someone has brought bread and jam, a treat, and it’s passed around as they watch the tributes stand around the cornucopia waiting for the Games to begin. 

Tara flinches as the cannon goes off, and she’s not the only one. She grabs Holly’s hand—Holly’s too young to be watching, really, but no-one wants to send her away either.

Cane immediately runs away towards the trees and the camera doesn’t stay with him. Instead they see the girl from Two swinging a sword at the boy from Twelve, the one who cried, and the boy from One breaks the boy from Seven’s neck. Tara isn’t bothered by it at all—she’s been watching the Games every year since she was little, after all—but she pulls Holly a bit closer to her. 

The camera flicks back to Cane who is being chased by the girl from Nine, who is tall and lean and rangy, and Tara focusses on the screen. Cane isn’t the fastest and this girl does look like a runner, but even so he should be able to outrun her. She’s gaining on him though and he doesn’t seem to have noticed. The room has gone silent, everyone watching Cane and the girl with a knife in her hand. Tara grips the mattress with her free hand, as hard as she can, until it hurts. 

Suddenly he spins around and slams his fist into her face and she crumples. Then he takes the knife off her, but Tara has to turn to Holly, who looks like she might start crying, so she misses what he does. When she turns back to the screen, the girl from Nine is dead.

Tara wants to look at Cane, even though she knows he’s alright, but the camera is already moving back to the centre of the action. The girl from Two slams her sword into the girl from Six with surprising force and then the scene shifts to show Floret, who is running behind the cornucopia. The boy from Four—the pretty one, who doesn’t look much older than Tara—hurls a spear at her back and she falls to the floor. Tara gulps. Obviously Floret was going to die—she had to die, because there can only be one victor and that will be Cane—and she didn’t even know Floret, so there’s no reason why her death would matter to Tara. She stares back at the screen, but there are only the Careers left, and they’re smiling and laughing. The girl from Two has sat down to clean her sword, only a foot away from the girl from Six’s body, and the boy from Four is yanking his spear out of Floret’s body. They look like they’ve just taken a break from the harvest for lunch because the overseers are elsewhere.

The camera switches to the boy and girl from Eight, who are walking down a riverbed, and then over to a pair of girls Tara doesn’t recognise. The commentators are running through who is dead—there are ten dead already—and who killed them.

‘A surprise kill from Eleven dark horse Cane Wilson,’ she hears. ‘Maybe there is something to that anger.’

It’s definitely pride she swallows then, pride that tastes like sick in the back of her throat. Cane is angry and the whole of Panem should feel his anger burn them. 

No-one sends Tara or Holly to bed, so they stay on their mattress well into the night, watching Cane drink river-water and try to build a fire. Tara’s cousin says he’s asking to be caught and her brother agrees, but she knows he’s going to be fine. None of the other tributes are even anywhere near him, and he needs to stay warm.

The pair from Eight haven’t started a fire anyway, and they still get caught by the Career pack. The boy’s head is smashed in by the boy from Two, who is nearly as tall as Cane and who has a heavy mace he’d picked up at the Cornucopia. The girl from One—the pretty, fragile looking girl—corners the girl from Eight and starts slicing into her with a wickedly sharp knife. She doesn’t kill her though, just leaves her a bloody, quivering mess on the floor when she saunters over to the boy from Four and kisses him. 

The girl from Eight dies in the night, when the pack are all settled in their sleeping bags. The girl from One shares with the boy from Four, and both of them are sticky with dried blood. He has finger-marks on his shoulders.

Tara must eventually fall asleep, because the television is still on when she wakes up the next morning. Holly is curled against her and she can’t move without waking her up, so she just lies there hugging her sister. She doesn’t know how long it will be until Cane returns, and Holly needs her family around her while they wait. 

They have to go to work after a quick breakfast, but as soon as anyone arrives, they go over to her and tell her what’s happened so far. Nothing happens in the morning, and the first new arrival after lunch just tells her that Cane is eating a snake, and she thinks of last night’s bread and jam and feels suddenly horrifically guilty, but all is generally quiet. 

A young boy, someone’s nephew or cousin is sent running over to her when she’s by the orange trees though, telling her between pants that the pack has split, that the boy from Four and the girl from One have gone off together. Tara remembers their bloody kisses the night before and swallows a sudden apprehension. If they find Cane so much the better. He’s bigger and stronger than the girl from Eight, or poor Floret, and even together they wouldn’t be able to beat him.

By the time Tara gets home the girl from Three is dead too. She was never going to be able to threaten Cane , so it’s better for everyone that she’s out of the way, but Tara is glad she wasn’t there to see her die. 

She is, however, there to see the girl from One and the boy from Four catch up with the boy from Ten, who looks younger than Tara, and reminds her of her cousin Rye. This is, Tara reminds herself, good. She picks Holly up and settles her on her lap and tells her that this is all for the best, it is, that they are doing Cane a favour. Holly starts crying though, and Tara has to shake her to get her to shut up. She doesn’t get that this is good, this is right, this is what Cane needs, he needs the boy from Ten to die, why isn’t he dead, Tara has never seen anyone as cut to pieces as he is not dead. Strips of skin and muscle are just hanging off his face and arms and the girl from One is still giggling, can’t she just shut up, can’t Holly shut up, this isn’t about them. She isn’t shutting up though, until the boy from Four wanders over, and then she is silent.

This one, she whispers to Holly, is a good death. They all have to die for Cane to win, but some of them, the pretty shiny ones, are rotten inside, and their deaths are not sad like the boy from Ten’s. 

The camera flashes back to Cane, who hears the cannon, whispers ‘final eight’ and then turns back over to sleep.

Tara doesn’t realise it, but she must have fallen to sleep too, because she wakes up suddenly when Mikkel shouts, ‘I will not watch my brother be a fucking murderer.’ 

She starts awake, her eyes flashing instinctively to the bright television, where Cane is sat next to a pale shape, which coalesces into a girl’s body. Mikkel is staring at her father, face hard and breathing heavily. ‘I will not watch my brother fucking die like this.’

‘He has a chance,’ her father protests.

‘That’s what you’re letting Tara think.’ 

Tara doesn’t understand what he means. Cane is going to win. In a couple of days he’ll be on a train home. He’s made Final Eight. She can’t remember the last time someone from Eleven made Final Eight.

Mikkel isn’t the only one who thinks that though, it turns out. In the morning light Cane looks thinner, his eyes deep in their sockets and his face drawn. Tara tries to remember when he last ate, and fails. People can sponsor tributes. She’s seen it on television, when they show the Victory Tour. It’s usually people from the Capitol, because who else has the money, but not always. Normal people, district people, can do it too.

She starts off in their fields, because that’s where everyone knows Cane best, and explains that he needs food and water so he can survive, but everyone just looks at her blankly. She tries again, explains that she’s not asking for much, but if everyone puts in a handful of coppers—or even just a copper—they should be able to buy him some bread, to tide him over until he can come home.

Everyone looks at each other, and then her aunt, Barley, sighs and looks at her. ‘We can’t spare it Tara. Not on the off-chance…it won’t help. Cane is going to have to make it by himself.’

Tara stares at her aunt, and then at the circle of her friends. Cane’s friends. Not one says a word. Tara wants to beg—would beg, if it would help—but somehow when she takes a breath all that comes out is a ragged sob, although she’s not a baby.

‘Go home, love,’ Barley says.

Tara doesn’t. She goes to her cousins’ fields, and her school-friends’, trudging steadily further away from home, but the blank faces don’t change, until she is in a field she has never even seen before, full of peach trees. She goes to the foreman and tells him how Cane hasn’t eaten in too long, and how he needs food, and the foreman looks at her and says, ‘oh kid. Haven’t you heard?’

‘Haven’t I heard what?’ Tara hears herself asking. Maybe there was some sort of disaster in the arena, taking out the competition. A rockslide or a flood, perhaps. Or maybe Cane had stolen some food and they didn’t need to send him any anymore.

‘Your brother,’ he says. ‘Oh kid, your brother is already dead.’

Tara goes with her parents to meet the train with Cane’s body on it. Someone has tried to piece his chest back together, but it’s still misshapen. She thinks she can see where the bones have caved in, making him deformed. His eyes are shut. Someone must have closed them for him, because he had been wide awake when the boy from Four had driven his trident into her brother’s chest. He had been wide awake for the whole thirteen minutes that Tara had watched on repeat until her mother sent her outside. She holds his hand, looks at how his fingers dwarf hers, and wonders how he couldn’t make it home. Wonders if any of them would ever make it home.

None of them ever do.


End file.
